1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology of extracting and analyzing digital information, in particular, to an extracting and analyzing apparatus, method and system for moving image.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the rapid developments of the digitalization technologies in many fields such as Internet technology, broadcasting, communication, entertainment, healthcare and education, one of the most common memory means is to store video/sound data in the form of multimedia information. Consequently, the requirement that only necessary information among massive multimedia information can be accessed easily and quickly becomes stricter. Meanwhile, to comply with the requirement of managing and handling efficiently the massive video/sound data stored in the internet or family servers, the image detection technology used for extracting and analyzing the meaning of video/sound content is developing actively.
For example, the technologies as follows are under development. As an example, in the case of hard-disk video-recording devices and digital appliances popularized, there is a “similar image searching technology” in the entertainment form corresponding to the new lifestyle, which is used for allowing the user to watch only what he or she wants to watch or allowing the user to enjoy displaying a video at the same time of recording; with the popularization of the digital camera, the digital video camera and the Internet, there is an “digest video producing technology” which is used for simply editing a variety of images and moving images as well as producing and storing a self-made digest video. In addition, in order to meet the requirements for the image search, the image search technology using keywords developed by Google or the like is employed in practice. There are also Browsing technology which is capable of freely going through moving images, the producing technology for “video conference record” and the like.
However, in the image technology using keywords, designating necessary keywords needs labor and time, and moreover it tends to bring out a great deal of images with the same keyword. As a result, in practice, satisfactory search results can not be obtained. Additionally, upon studying many search technologies where Meta information is automatically extracted from the video and the desired images are found according to the Meta information as well as the technology for automatically producing “video conference record”, Browsing technology and so on, difficulties are found in terms of extracting the necessary features in images in a manner of high accuracy, exactly detecting and classifying the shot, automatically producing a digest, and automatically extracting exciting scenes. Therefore, the prior art does not provide the applicable video searching technology, digest producing technology and Browsing technology.
Therefore, there is also a general video analyzing technology which handle the content in image based on one's intuition rather than on the image search with keyword so as to more effectively manage and handle the content in image. The relevant technologies may be referred to JP 2002-344872 and JP 2006-54622.
However, particularly in extracting exciting scenes in moving image and producing a digest, the following detection errors of shot change often take place: the background color distribution feature is changed due to the video camera movement at a high speed and/or the object movement at a high speed; occasionally the content which is essentially not a shot change is detected as a shot change; occasionally it is difficult to distinguish the changes in the color distribution feature and the region-of-interest feature between the long shot and the medium shot, resulting in the incapability of detecting the content which should be a shot change.